Your papillae momentus is shot, these pills
may help but you’ll probably lose your right arm.
My right arm! How will I live? So the client
thrashes out of the office like a man learning
to swim by drowning but after a couple weeks
he can almost float, button his own coat.
So he goes back to the specialist who says,
I bet your Palace of Moranzini’s collapsed,
maybe this drug will work, it seems to have
some effect on black widow bites, only thing is
you’ll have to lose your lake. My lake!
For days afterward, everyone he sees is carrying
a kayak, nautical analogies overflow
even the financial section. Now would be
a good time for a couple strangelets to shred
the fabric of reality but his experiments
at the cyclotron don’t amount to much dark matter
so reality goes on with a sloshing sound,
a pointless flopping in his chest then the doctor
says, It’s got to be your heart and the man cries out,
Lord, you’ve got me in your tweezers now!
Ha, ha, what an opportunity to meet the deductible,
you just fly three inches over yourself
and declare a national disaster. Look
at those miserable robots down there
trying to start their cars, pay their interest,
cook eggplant. Let’s see what happens
when we drop this big rock, saith the Lord,
the whole planet wobbling on its loose axle
while the patients come and go, some getting weaker,
buying expensive sunglasses and losing them,
some getting stronger, buying expensive sunglasses
and breaking them, puddled in mud, the bones
ground down and thrown upon the hibiscus
to encourage sturdier blooms.
So the waters freeze and melt, the mountains
rise and shrug, the bolts of the Ferris wheel
loosen and are tightened, snow approaches
the house and turns back, forgetting why it came.
So the dead father says in the dream, I didn’t
want you to know but now you know. bam bam bam,
you think you want out but you want in.
You’re on the wrong side of the door.
You’re on the fifth green when the lightning comes.
You’re halfway through your sandwich
and they’ve already taken your plate.
The food is good here but the service
crazy and you wonder why you came,
why you’ve been coming for years and still
no one knows you. Because no one knows you?
Silly you to be known anyway
now that the grid is showing,
the chicken wire they affix the flowers to.
It’s almost 3 and the rain has stopped.
The sun comes out and it’s not an accusation
or a plea. You can sit in it for a minute.
Drink your tea before the declensions
of evening into the infinitive of sleep.
First you will wake in disbelief, then
in sadness and grief and when you wake
the last time, the forest you’ve been
looking for will turn out to be
right in the middle of your chest.